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Tunisian voters wear their excitement on their fingers

By Jim RankinStaff reporter

Sun., Oct. 23, 2011

TUNIS, TUNISIA—The lines were long, the turnout large. Tunisians exercised their civil duty across the country, dipping index fingers in ink, and wearing it proudly.

The historic Sunday vote, which came nine months after the toppling of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and one-party rule that lasted over 50 years, went off with a few problems — but none of them major.

There was some taboo election-day campaigning at some polling stations, some opened late and others had very long lines. With a team of observers in the country, there were no reports of corruption.

Families made a day of it, with parents and children going together to vote — many, parents included, for the very first time.

By night, the cafes along Avenue Bourguiba in Tunis were full, the people soaking up the moment. Vanloads of police had nothing to do but watch the celebration.

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Fatma Amdouri, 20, an art student who voted for her first time, arrived at her polling station at 9 a.m. and had to wait three hours in the sun, which she did not mind in the least.

“I was proud,” she said. She also compared the experience to Eid. “And when everyone finished voting everyone was congratulating each other and applauding.”

There was some campaigning going on inside her polling station, which she did not appreciate. Some older voters, she said, put an end to that, though, and ushered the campaigners outside.

Cab driver Ahmed Rezgui, 40, waited two hours to cast his vote but he also did not mind.

“This election, for me, is not for me,” said Rezgui, flipping down the visor in his taxi. “It is for them,” he said, pointing to photographs of his two girls, ages 3 and 9.

“I am happy, yes. This is the first time that I have voted.”

He voted for the moderate Islamist party Ennahda, a banned party under Ben Ali, who imprisoned party members and cracked down on men in beards. The party was favoured to win the most votes, though with over 80 parties in the running, a majority is not expected.

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Ennahda ran a platform that espoused democracy as the best way to ensure people’s rights, including that of Tunisian women, who enjoy the most liberal rights in the Arab world. In the lead-up to the vote, there were fears that women’s rights would erode under Ennahda, but party leader Rachid Ghannochi assured that would not be the case.

Rezgui is no longer afraid to wear a beard, which he keeps closely trimmed.

Four of his friends, he said, were imprisoned for 20 years under Ben Ali. All of them are free now. Two are working and are doing okay, but two, he said, have not recovered. “They are not normal.”

The election was a vote for the next generation, and fittingly so, since it was young people who led a revolution that had been bubbling up for years but took the immolation of a young fruit vendor in December — and organizing on social media — to ignite it.

On Jan. 14, following mass protests and crackdowns that left more than 300 hundred dead, Ben Ali fled for Saudi Arabia. A month later, it was Hosni Mubarak who followed suit in Egypt, sending more ripples across the Arab world that continue to today.

Tunisians were casting votes to choose members of the 217-seat constituent assembly, which will be tasked with writing the constitution and selecting an interim government.

In a country of 10 million, 4.1 million were registered to vote, nearly half of them women. There were also another 400,000 Tunisians living abroad who were eligible to vote.

Early turnout estimates put voter participation between 60 and 90 per cent, which in itself is an indication of the faith Tunisians have in this democratic effort. It was not possible to verify the numbers.

Results will come Monday, at the earliest.

The vote is seen as a crucial first step to forging a democracy that must deal with economic challenges that have not changed since the toppling of Ben Ali. Unemployment is high among the young and educated. Tourism, frightened off by the uprising has yet to return. Outside Tunis, the situation is worse.

Still, the vote has happened — and that is something.

“This is very nice, something special for us,” said Bessem Benhassine, 31, who works for a tourism company in the city of Djerba. He made it to the polls in the early afternoon before going to work, and proudly showed off his purple left index finger.

“This is like a big party for us,” he said. “It was well organized, everybody’s smiling, even. It is like Eid, or Christmas. It all started here in Tunisia, the protests, and we realized that we are the first country in all the Arabic countries, and I think Tunisians are happy now because they know what they have done and what they are doing.”

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